Bob Dylan, paraphrasing Honest Abe, said:
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time,
But all of the people can't be all right all of the time.
Some of the people can be all right part of the time,
But all of the people can't be all right all of the time.
He nailed it right on the head, and it's our lesson for today on quality Fantasy play. Since all the people cannot be all right all the time and since we are each a member of "all the people," we must each assume that we cannot be all right all the time.
Sure, we would each love to be part of "Some of the people," those who are all right part of the time, but odds are just against that.
So what do we hope for in Fantasy? Well to paraphrase the turtle, "slow and steady wins the race." Or maybe that's a direct quote. Whatev.
Anyways, my point is that there is the tendency to want to gamble when making predictions. We each want to be the first to call a great upset, the first to know who was going to have the most touchdowns this year, and the genius who throws a pitcher out there who just got back from Cancer rehab and throws a no hitter.
But Fantasy just laughs.
HAHAHAHAHA.
Not at the cancer guy who threw the no-no. At you and me, who seeing said mound remission brilliance thinks he'll do it again, and then takes it hard when that guy gets ripped his next time out. So sad.
Nice try genius. More often than not, that which is unlikely will not happen. Bugger.
So where lies the boring road to Fantasy durability and trophy hording? Right down the middle. Or I guess right down the just above middle. True, you still gotta be better than average to win. But shooting for the perfect 10 is dangerous. Especially when you have multiple categories of points to score in. Let me paint you a picture, seen not just this year but also last year in my Fantasy baseball league.
One dude thought it would make sense to get all the best pitchers. So he did. Not hard to do because most people wait a bit to draft pitchers, due to both their fragility and to the fact that a lot of pitchers who didn't do greet last year will do great this year, so they'll be available after the draft on "the wire." So he gets all the best and he gets them EARLY. But in order to do this, he must sacrifice hitting. As in, no hitters taken for 8 rounds or so until he had all the best pitchers.
He is essentially gambling that by scoring the highest in all the pitching categories he will not need to score much in the hitting ones, and he'll take the cake.
Not so fast.
The problem with this strategy is that we are using Rotiserrie scoring, which basically means that if you win a category you get the amount of points corresponding to the amount of teams in the league. So with 10 teams, the winner of each point category gets 10 points. Second place, however, gets 9. So our pitching enamored friend can do as well as he wants in every pitching category, but he can only get one more point in each category than second place, even if he beats second place by 100 wins or saves or strikeouts. He can get 50 points for winning every pitching category, but somebody in second or third or fourth in those categories can get 45, 40, 35, etc.....you see where I'm going. If that other person has not sacrificed their hitting for those 35 or 40 points, and they also get 35 or 40 points from hitting, well they will absolutely DOMINATE that pitcher-slut who will most likely only get 1 or 2 points in five hitting categories, giving him 5-10 points to add to his 50.
Even if he is correct in assuming he got the BEST pitchers, which is quite an assumption, he will still have to make up 25-35 points in hitting in order to be there in the 75 point region where you need to be to win this league. That means he needs an average of 5-7 points in each hitting category, and I can tell you that from his crappy hitters who he had to get in the end of the draft, that just ain't gonna happen, or I'll be a hippo's hooker.
I don't want to bore you with more stat talk, so you'll just have to trust me on that. And I am speaking from experience, for this year I went for the high side of mediocrity with all my picks, figuring I wouldn't likely win any categories, but wanted to be in the hunt in all of them, and I have 72.5 points right now, good for a 9.5 point first place lead going into the last 5 weeks of the season. (knock on wood)
And by the way, the quote from Honest Abe that Dylan was parasinging was:
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people
some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
So there you go......Fantasy words to live by, brought to you by Bob, Abe, and the turtle.
Keep on Fantasizing. You know I will.
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2 comments:
bob also said, "you play with the world like it's your little toy." another apt observation relating to fantasy, i think. but more the existential aspect.
i gather from your post, then, that efficiency is the key to fantasy success. to beat your opponents in a particular area by as small a margin as possible is, it sounds like, the fantasy ideal. it means you wasted no resources. so it is, in a sense, an exercise in conservation, no?
very true.......as a Fantasizer, the world is indeed my little toy, and as a radical liberal progressive, I can't argue with the sanity of statistical conservatism. Or at least the world we call "reality" bends to my world of "fantasy" in that I choose what is important, call it "stats" and they become the convenient distinctions by which I rule those around me.....
or something.
What came after Bob's Abe line is almost the coolest EVER: "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."
so dreamy
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